A blog mostly focused on poetry. I am not sure I understand anything else.

Sunday, August 25, 2013

The Loon

I know it sounds crazy, but—like
you—I might be a tenure-track catamite today, instead of a virtuous poet
working temp jobs that I detest: if only Fred had selected a slightly tighter
pair of pants that evening—our first date.

Our dinner was fine.
French. Bouillabaisse. His conversation and his choice of wine, thoughtful and
excellent. We discussed my possible future—the famous men and women (and others)
that I might meet at cocktail parties with his help.

After coffee and crème de
menthe, we took a stroll. He waxed poetic, rattling off bits of Bishop and
Merrill by the light of a waning moon. It was a beautiful autumn night. The sky
was clear. The air was crisp. Three or four stars sparkled above Manhattan. I
doubt that we would have lived happily ever after, but we might have enjoyed a
few evenings of strip-poker in his apartment, or, at the very least, a healthy
hand of Old Maid.

It was not to be. I was his
student, you see, and a former gymnast, as I had just demonstrated on the
horizontal bar in a little park near his apartment.

Fred Roland was here on a
special Visa: a visiting professor of poetry at the university. And he wore
baggy khakis.

I looked down at his face.
I kind of admired the man for attempting to defy time as well as gravity:
turning purple, eyes-bulging, hanging upside down in
Washington Heights—keys, credit cards, condoms, and a handful of change
cascading from his pockets. I realized with sadness that cards were
probably no longer in the cards for us. Not even Old Maid.

He consented to live, with
a grunt, after a painful attempt at something more spectacular—some kind of
spin—before he dismounted, with stinging soles, upon the Earth.

Fred staggered over to a
nearby slide and sat on its steely lip, to catch his breath and balance. I
crouched to collect the scattered contents of his khakis, chattering about how
I had once crushed my nuts in junior high attempting a similar move.

He said nothing.

When I thought I had collected
everything, I handed the stuff back to him. He sorted it. He counted the
change. He looked at me quizzically. And then he looked around. He squinted and he said, a touch tersely it
seemed to me, “I think you missed something.” He winced, “over there.”

He pointed to a derelict
disk shining in the dark.

I followed his shaking
finger and walked over to where he was pointing, to see for myself.

He was right.

I had missed something.

I picked it up.

Even in the dim orange
light under the swings, I could tell it was a coin. A newly minted dollar. A
lost Canadian Loon.